Conehead vs. Dogula

I keep fluctuating between having a good idea for commentary on this blog and not really having anything to say - nothing of interest anyway. Basically I'm trying to get myself geared up to kick ass on another project at work to help propel me to the next promotion and get through the usual holiday shit so my life can be back to normal and Lena and I can get back on track with our training for the next 5K. Which reminds me, I meant to search for a 5K in the metro area sometime this spring. I've been meaning to do that for a few weeks now so let's see if I can actually remember to do it before I log off this evening.

There has been some recent "excitement" in our part of the world. First, I finally managed to get my ass in gear and take care of a little piece of personal business - at work of course - on Monday.

I called the vet to get Tas' annual exam scheduled and to get Greta's spay set up. Well, it so happened that they had an opening Tues. morning for surgery, so I went ahead and scheduled it. We decided to have her micro-chipped while she was out too since SH really wanted that done. AND it was FIVE dollars cheaper to do it while she was already under for surgery (they do that as incentive to have it done), which really put a dent in the FIVE HUNDRED dollar total bill! Well, we did opt for the pre-op blood work to check her clotting factor along with a couple other things to be on the safe side and she was due for a few other final vaccinations, so it wasn't just the spay that cost that much. Still, it was a bit of a shock. But I digress - so I drop her off Tues. morning for her girlie surgery. As expected, they need to weigh her, which I was hoping for anyway since the last time she was weighed was when she was about 6 months old and was about 67 lbs at the time. Big brother Shilo was 72 lbs. So now she's a little over 8 months and when she gets on the scale it does the bouncing back and forth 70 - 94 - 83 - 90 etc. It finally stops (roughly) at 89.4. Yup, our little Fat Girl really is FAT! OK, she's more "girthy" than anything. She outweighs her brother by almost 20 lbs and I don't think she's quite done growing yet at 8 1/2 months! WOW!

She came out of surgery just fine and we picked her up Wed. afternoon. As we expected - and somewhat sadistically hoped for - she donned the plastic cone (or the Elizabethan collar, as a fellow cat shelter lady called it). We tried our best not to laugh at her outright, settled up the bill, got our instructions for pain meds, suture monitoring, etc. and SH led her out the door. After listening to the vet tech explain to us how it will probably take her a couple days or so to get used to maneuvering with the collar on, what does she do? On the way out of the vet clinic - WHAM! She runs smack into the metal frame doorway, creating a large fracture down the side of the cone. So I go BACK into the clinic, wait a couple MORE minutes for a free tech to come out and ask if I could possibly have another cone because my gifted dog managed to nearly destroy the other one on the way out the door. Luckily the tech just laughed, said sure and to hang on a minute while she went and got ANOTHER one.

We tried to hold out as long as possible with that first cone but, of course, within approximately 1 hour of arriving home, that one was just about hanging off her collar. So we had to break out #2. Here are some fun pics of her trying to navigate the house with the cone head.

Leaving the bedroom (pay no attention to the floor in serious need of refinishing :o):


Trying to get out the back door to go potty:


I love this one. "How the F*CK am I supposed to eat?!


Trying to maintain a shred of dignity by acting casual, as if nothing is different:

Look at the poor pathetic baby with the crazy-milky eyes (they're actually brown):

So Thurs. night comes and I'm alone with Conehead because SH is working an overnight shift. Has anyone out there had to deal with a fairly rambunctious LARGE dog who needs to have a frickin' cone on her head? Let me tell you, it was a real treat! If she wasn't ignoring my commands the first 30 times or so, she was banging, scraping, slamming or bouncing that fucking cone off the wall, bed, nightstand, her kennel - really any object she could find - and LOUDLY. After a while of that and my resulting screaming at her to just lie down, I was finally able to get to sleep, only to be awoken a few times over the course of the night with more of the same. Which, incidently, contributed to the demise of cone #2. By morning the cone was literally hanging off of her collar with no way to secure it in a remotely functionable fashion. I would have called in a little late at work and ran to the vet or Pet.co/Pet.smart to pick up another cone but I couldn't remember for sure if I had a morning meeting and frankly I was so close to my breaking point that I needed to just get the hell out of there and away from her before I wound up smacking her silly. After that I can really see how shaken baby syndrome happens. Luckily SH was able to make the run after he got off work and was actually able to do a little research and found the "Co.mfy Cone" which is basically the same deal but it is made with nylon fabric over a foam structure that velcros shut so #1 It won't break apart when slammed into walls, doorways, etc. and #2 it's got to be a bit more comfortable and almost act like a pillow when she rests. So now this is what she's sporting:

Unfortunately, it's hard to see in these pics but it almost looks like a flower (like a tulip) and her head is a giant stamen. I asked SH if they came in other colors like red or purple but he said they only came in black. Now she looks like Dogula. She vants to suck your blooood. It's also trimmed in reflective material so when Dogula goes out searching for victims after dark she's still safely visible!

We also made holiday cookies as part of SH's birthday celebration. (He's been wanting to make cookies. Isn't that cute?) More on the birthday festivities later - this post is already really long and I need to do more searching on 5Ks. But I will leave you with a photo of the family room progress as mentioned previously (even this section is not done yet) and a sneak peak at what Christmas cookies look like in the Gumby-SH household. Later! :)




And yes, it was two adults that decorated these cookies...

Victory Is Mine!

This past week has been a pretty damned good one! I got the confirmation that my promotion was approved by HR. Not only that but my pay increase, on which my expectations were effectively lowered due to the shitty economy and resulting budget cuts, wound up being quite a bit bigger than expected. I was thinking that I would be lucky if I got 4 or 5%. I wound up with a 15% increase! Yeah, you read that right – 15 percent! Whoo hoo! What a great birthday present, huh? Honestly, I don't mean to sound like I'm bragging or anything, this has just been a looong time coming. And for anyone out there having less than stellar luck with the current job and economy atmosphere, I'm crossing my fingers and sending good thoughts your way. :)

Along with celebrating my promotion, I was able to get some more done in the basement/family room remodel that isn’t quite done yet. We now have one end of the room completely painted. It just needs the finishing work – wood door and window trim, baseboard molding and chair rail installed (as well as the floor but that comes last). We also have the new “black Friday deal” tv set up – 52 inches of LCD HD! This weekend I dug out our receiver and speakers and got the surround sound reconnected and vacuumed the layer of cat hair off the sectional sofa from when it was stored not-so-well under plastic in the basement during remodeling. We just threw the new area rug down temporarily to make it more cozy too! I’m working on getting SH to agree on having friends over for movie night before it’s all done. I don’t know for sure where exactly in the process he thinks it has to be before we can entertain. I say, we have comfortable places to sit, a huge tv and awesome sound and that’s all we really need! Really, like our friends are going to say “OMG, their family room isn’t totally done yet. I don’t want to go over there!” If someone did have that attitude, I’d say fuck ‘em! Like any of our friends really care. I’ll have to check in w/SH to confirm exactly what it is that he really insists be done before entertaining before I blow a vessel over it. Maybe he just thinks all the painting should be done. In which case, I could compromise on that.

I’ll try to remember to post a few pics of the progress – in case anyone is interested! ;)

Couple Quickies - ;)

I don't have enough time to really write about anything but wanted to share a couple funnies...

A while back I was e-mailing with a friend (I'm sure most IRL friends will figure out who this is) and she sent me this little "story" about her activities one day. I was laughing so hard in my cubicle that tears were forming and I had to show a coworker because she was wondering what was up. Part of the humor is picturing my friend running around in this scenario, but I think it's still amusing if you don't know her.

"oh, and a funny Fritz story. last night he was running around the house with a full-sized poop stuck to his butt. I pulled it off and found that it was full of these little twiggy dried grass thingy's (from outside on the balcony in a pot that he likes to munch on). after I got the turd off there was still a giant twig sticking out of his ass so I chased him around the house trying to pull it out. he thought it was some sort of game and kept teasing me by running away at the last second. then he bit me and looked all violated. puh-lease!"

Also, SH found this item on some website and of course he said he thought of me. I wonder if they make it in a bumper sticker or t-shirt or something. It's pretty amusing. I think I want it...

We're Runners!

Holy crap, it’s been a while! I really didn’t mean to slack this long. It started out with waiting for SH to get the photos of Lena and me he took at the race (which he still hasn’t done due to some computer issues he was having – must get on him again) and then I was bogged down with my project at work (more on that later) and then blah blah blah…

Anyhoo, the race was great! It started out pretty chilly in the morning, much to our disliking, but we put on our hats and gloves and packed in as much coffee as was safe – didn’t want to have to pee halfway through!

We really had no idea what to expect and were prepared for a bit of a cluster, but there really wasn’t that many people there at first when we were getting our packets and it really was pretty organized and quite the event. We got a bunch of fun info, coupons, free food and drinks AND free Caribou coffee! I prefer Dunn Bros myself, but hey, I’m not going to turn my nose up at someone who wants to give me free coffee! ;)

We were pretty amazed and excited about the adrenaline high we had that had us pumping and allowed us to only have to walk a couple short stints that we figured totaled no more than .5 mile – and that was mainly due to a side stitch that Lena developed. With how we were feeling, I wonder if we could have possibly ran the whole thing if poor Lena hadn’t been plagued with the dreaded stitch.

Our next goal is to do another 5K in the spring and run the entire thing – NO WALKING! Then it will be a 10K, I think, regardless of whether we can run the entire thing. It will be like this time – we’ll just DO IT. And THEN we’ll focus on running the whole thing. Then what? A 10 mile, and then a half marathon…

That’s the goal at this point anyway. We’ll see what happens…

So we ran, cashed in on some “free” stuff (we did pay a $25 entry fee) and then celebrated by taking a leisurely morning afterwards wandering to this cute French café with French foods (like yummy quiches and sandwiches) and the most beautiful dessert/pastry case (patisserie?) over on the Mpls side of the metro. We had a nice brunch and got a few small treats for later. Then we meandered over to a billiards store for fun (well, because SH wanted to stop there because we were in the area) and we stopped by a cute little garden center we happened upon. It was a nice wind down to our eventful morning.

I guess I’ll wrap up with a few pictures that Lena’s dad took, which was a rather humorous moment. He was standing on the side of the road an kind of hopped out with the camera and shouted “Look alive!” at us (thus the excited looks) and I swear, I didn’t recognize him at all! It must have been the fact that he’s been growing his hair out lately so it’s a bit longer than I remember and a bit grayer too. Lena was pretty amused when she found out I didn’t know that was her dad at the time. She exclaimed “What, did you think he was just some weird old guy taking our picture!?”

“Uh, yeah… I thought it was pretty funny!” In my defense there was a bunch of people (race volunteers, I’m guessing) on the sidelines throughout the thing yelling things at us like “Way to go!” “You’re doing great!” “One mile down!” “You’re halfway there. Congratulations! Way to go!” etc. So, it didn’t really seem like that much of a stretch… Anyhoo, here’s the pics I have at this point thanks to Lena and her daddy!

Us "Looking alive"!

We're runners! Whoo hoo!

Very attractive shot of us enjoying our "free" post-race bananas. Wow, I actually look like a monkey too! Blech!!

That is all for now. :)

Lucky Girl

Today is my and SH's fourth anniversary. We will go out for a nice dinner at Kin.caid's and then probably wander around the area where the restaurant is located in downtown St. Paul, which bears a resemblance to Paris so of course we love it there! Then we'll probably just head home and have some more cocktails and cuddle time. ;)

Yesterday he reminded me of something he's said in the past but was something I didn't really want to think about or accept at the time but now... Now it is starting to sound completely wonderful. He said, and I'm paraphrasing a bit because my memory is still intermittent these days:

'No matter what happens with this kid thing - if it just doesn't work out - I really think we can have a great life together, just the two of us, enjoying being with each other because being with you is the most important thing to me.'

I really am lucky.

I love you sweetie. Here's to many more anniversaries...

It's A Girl!

Well, I’m finally getting around to posting about the new addition to our family - a new German Shepherd puppy.
We figured she needed a good German name, so we decided on Greta. Greta was born on April 1 in Albert Lea and came home with us around mid/late May. It just took this long for SH to get his pics loaded from his digital camera for me to post anything because how can you post about a puppy without including pics?

Here we are in the yard. She’s very tired as you can see. It’s so very hard being a puppy, you know.

Shilo seems to be very happy now that he has a little sister to play fight with. He likes to eat her head, as we call it. Seriously, he puts her whole head in his mouth and… gnaws on it – that seems to be the best description. Lena could tell you. They both, actually, like to chew on each other’s head. Doesn’t look very fun to me, but whatever…

A couple weeks ago we were shopping and in the pet section I found the cutest “costume” – that’s what the tag said. It was a pink beret with the Eiffel tower on it and the text “J’adore Paris”. Naturally, I had to get it! So, here is Greta with her first ensemble.

Since I can’t do this stuff to Shilo, I’ll do it to Greta! Hee hee!

Yup, Shilo loves his sister…

Tas, on the other hand (in background), not so sure...

Yay Me!

It appears I am down 3 lbs now. Not a whole lot, but 3 in 1 1/2 weeks works out to be an average of 2 lbs a week. Not too bad. Hopefully I can continue this for the next 3 months or so.

Also, Lena and I are slowly working back into the weekend gym routine; which is very good, and much needed.

I seem to be doing quite well with my restricted calorie plan. To review the past week I come up with:

6 days under my allowed 1500 calories (under by roughly 100)
6 days under my allowed fat intake
still keeping up with my food tracking (obviously)
keeping on track with daily weigh-ins

I'll have to post something non-food/weight loss related. I've been meaning to for the last few days but things have just been kind of crazy - mostly at work. That's right, I still haven't won the lottery and quit my job. ...oh well, there's always next time... ;)

Mmmm... I'm sitting here checking blogs, waiting for it to be time where I'm forced to get dressed to go over to mom's for a visit, and watching the fat squirrels run around and playing games in my backyard. Whilst doing so, I figured what the hell, I'll have a little bit of coffee since I've done so well abstaining in the last 6 months for the sake of my gametes. I didn't want to brew a pot and saw there was some leftover in the maker so figured I'd just heat that up and drink it. Now, as I drink it I find myself thinking that I really can't remember when the last time sweet hubby had coffee was. Did he brew this coffee yesterday (hopefully), or was it Friday? Or Thursday? ...Wednesday???

Apparently all this treatment crap and hard work to try to stay balanced both emotionally and physically and, well, sane, has taken a toll on my memory. I was mentioning to sweet hubby this morning that the thing I thought I needed at Target last night (and couldn't remember) must have been a refill on my thyoid med and figured I better call it in so I could pick it up today since I'm down to 3 pills and that was weird that I never got a call on this to let me know it's ready. Well, apparently the pharmacy's automated phone line called 3 days in a row about a week ago, according to hubby.

"It did?" I inquire, confused.
"Yeah, I told you about it. Don't you remember?" He responds, somewhat incredulously.
"Huh, no. That doesn't ring a bell." More confusion as I wrack my brain trying to remember.
"Yeah, I told you a couple times." He confirms.

I guess it's to be expected with the kind of strain I've been under these last couple/few years with the IF struggle and dealing with the mom-grandma situation (I'll have to post about that later - long story). It's probably nothing to be too concerned about - well, unless it expands to forgetting that dish soap is not to be used as a salad topper and goo gone is not a good source of citrus-based vitamin C...

Progress Check

All in all, I'd have to say that I've gotten off to a pretty decent start as far as this nutrition/calorie monitoring thing started.

Here's where I'm at so far:

Target daily calories - 1500
Fat intake recommended limit - 47g

Tues 1/22/08
1506 cal consumed
6 cal over goal
45.5g fat
1.5g fat under

Wed 1/23/08
1439 cal consumed
61 cal under goal
45.5g fat
1.5g fat under

Thurs 1/24/08
1866 cal consumed
366 cal over goal
55g fat
8g fat over

Fri 1/25/08
1577 cal consumed
77 cal over goal
65.5g fat
18.5g fat over

Sat 1/26/08
1991 cal consumed
491 cal over goal
85g fat
38g fat over

Despite being so over yesterday (Sat), I'm still rather proud of myself considering that it was girl's night as Jessica's place. She of course HAD to have a yummy spread with caprese snacks (Roma tomato with a blob of one of those marinated mozzarella balls and a spritz of balsamic viniagrette), homemade guacamole with tortilla chips, hummus with pita chips, pesto pasta with chicken, artichoke hearts, great & sundried tomatoes. Oh, and of course a variety of wine and mixed drinks, including key lime martinis (I didn't have any because of the cream) and caramel appletinis (I had two). So all things considered, I did pretty well. I figure the fact that I still stayed 9 calories under what I should consume to maintain my weight is something to be pleased about. Yay me! :)

Now starts the first whole week of monitoring. I hope I can keep this up and don't lose interest and drop it. That seems to be my problem with these things. I get bored and stop doing what I was doing and that's how I fall off the wagon...

Oh, another stat to add, in the last week I seem to have dropped 5 lbs. Actually I think it's more like 3 or 4 and I was just really bloated the initial day I weighed myself and/or weighed at the wrong time - not sure. I am currently trying to get in the habit of hopping on the scale everyday before showering so that I can enter my weight in the Live Healthy America daily journal (and keep tabs on myself). Hope I can keep up with all of this! ;)

Numbers - Oh, My Head Hurts

I've now done some online research (and factored in Dom's two cents) and have come up with the following:

According to the Mayo Clinic website, I need to consume 2000 calories daily to maintain my current weight. To maintain a weight of 140/135, I would need to consume 1850 calories daily.

According to caloriesperhour.com, a healthy calorie deficit for weight loss would be 300 to 400 at my current weight. By their numbers a deficit of 400 will take 9 months to lose 31 lbs, 6 months to lose 20 - a bit slow. But, a deficit of only 100 more calories supposedly will bring me to 30 lbs in 7 months and 20 lbs. in 5, at 1500 calories daily a little better. But now that isn't even factoring in weekend workouts and an increased walking schedule, or increased calorie burn. I'm not sure how accurate averaging is, but I figured if I average my previous typical weekend workouts, daily home exercises and walking (figuring walking 5 days per week for 1 hour) I supposedly will burn approx. 500 calories a day... ?? I'm thinking then that I should be able to drop close to 1000 calories daily (or at least 800 or so anyway) between cutting back on food and exercising, which would definitely keep me out of the extreme calorie deficit Dom mentioned. I have also read before that extremely low caloric intake will affect other bodily systems that are not reqired for survival, like the reproductive system, which we definitely don't want.

I hope I'm figuring correctly, or even close to correctly. I just hate working all these numbers! Too much math! Argh!

Anyway, I think my plan is to a) get back to my previous weekend gym workouts b) be sure to get 5 1hr walks in per week c) force myself to count calories and keep it at 1500 - and see how it goes.

Oh, but what about the fat and fiber...? Mmmm... Do I just say screw that and shoot for just the calories? Maybe to start out anyway, to keep things less confusing. This calorie monitoring will be trying enough for me. I usually last a few days or even a week before just dumping it altogether. I'll have to try to find a way to make it fun - or like a competition with myself. ...something.